"Arriving at last at the extremity of the island"-- We have seen that the bridge Bifrost was connected with the extremity of Asgard-- "they beheld a smooth and narrow arm of the sea, and beyond it a vast and apparently boundless country," (Europe?) "_connected with their island by a narrow and rocky pathway, arising from the bosom of the waters_." This is probably a precise description of the connecting ridge; it united the boundless continent, Europe, with {p. 384} the island; it rose out of the sea, it was rocky; it was the broken crest of a submerged mountain-chain. What became of it? Here again we have a tradition of its destruction. We read that, after Adima and Héva had passed over this rocky bridge-- "No sooner did they touch the shore, than trees, flowers, fruit, birds, all that they had seen from the opposite side, vanished in an instant, _amidst terrible clamor; the rocks by which they had crossed sank beneath the waves_, a few sharp peaks alone remaining above the surface, to indicate the place of the bridge, _which had been destroyed by divine displeasure_." Here we have the crushing and instant destruction by the Drift, the terrific clamor of the age of chaos, and the breaking down of the bridge Bifrost under the feet of the advancing armies of Muspel; here we have "the earth" of Ovid "settling down a little" in the ocean; here we have the legends of the Cornishmen of the lost land, described in the poetry of Tennyson; here we have the emigrants to Europe cut off from their primeval home, and left in a land of stones and clay and thistles. It is, of course, localized in Ceylon, precisely as the mountain of Ararat and the mountain of Olympus crop out in a score of places, wherever the races carried their legends. And to this day the Hindoo points to the rocks which rise in the Indian Ocean, between the eastern point of India and the Island of Ceylon, as the remnants of the Bridge; and the reader will find them marked on our maps as" Adam's Bridge" (_Palam Adima_). The people even point out, to this day, a high mountain, from whose foot the Bridge went forth, over which Adima and Héva, crossed to the continent; and it is known in modern geography as "Adam's Peak." So vividly have the traditions of a vast antiquity come down to us! The legends {p. 385} of the Drift have left their stamp even in our schoolbooks. And the memory of this Bridge survives not only in our geographies, but in our religions. Man reasons, at first, from below upward; from godlike men up to man-like gods; from Cæsar, the soldier, up to Cæsar, the deity. Heaven was, in the beginning, a heavenly city on earth; it is transported to the clouds; and there its golden streets and sparkling palaces await the redeemed.